(for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)
Good morning enjoyers and savourers, welcome to Day 458 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.
If I manage to finish this today, it will be one full week of posts for the first time since…
…five months ago in April, fucking hell.
I say “if”, because whilst I am sitting here writing a post out on my old battered laptop, I continue to find it a struggle to put words together on everything I am feeling lately. Perhaps it is a sense of being overwhelmed, that there are so many stimuli assaulting me on the daily that finding words to describe all of it feels like an impossible task.
In a way it is a privilege to be able to write like this. To sit in an undisturbed space away from others with only my own thoughts for company, being able to use the power of modern technology to write them all down and publish them online for all to see.
Bit of a weird reflection coming from someone who earlier in the week declared their distaste for social media as a whole, but the world we live in is one of polar opposites right now. So many are struggling the world over, even in developed countries, but advancements in technology have made resources available to more people while those advancements also produce many of the challenges that face humanity as a whole.
There is an insane amount of luck involved for someone like me to exist in the way I do at the current time, and as the title suggests, I am aiming to enjoy the time I currently have in the best way possible, because the tides could shift for better or worse at any moment.
This extends to me enjoying time with my parents, which is something I felt I would never get to say when I consider the situation four years ago. We were locked in a bitter cold war over the state of my transition, and I went six months without seeing them until I finally broke down the walls. Nowadays I would consider not seeing them for six months extremely strange given I will see them at least once a month, if not more frequently.
Given the fact they are aging and I am getting reminders of that on the regular, I am aiming to try and enjoy what time I have with them when I can. Family emotions can be complicated, and while I feel they may not fully understand the person I chose to become, I know that they know it makes me happy which is ultimately what they would want from me.
Nothing can last forever, and whilst the pain from anything ending can last longer than anticipated, I will always aim to appreciate the fleeting nature of life where possible.
Dragging up something from the backlogs today for the review topic, especially as I get to do something I have not done in a very long while. It is once more time for…
Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!
A couple weeks back I spent an afternoon hanging out with one of my closest friends with the goal of discussing writing together, mainly what story projects we had and bouncing ideas off each other to see where things could be improved but mainly to enjoy talking shop together.
As part of this, and the fact I did not eat dessert when provided at a hangout a couple days prior, she agreed to pay for my lunch that day. Whilst I will discuss the price as always, this was paid for by someone else. Thanks for that!
After going to one coffeehouse initially and having it be far too busy to actually hear each other speak, we took a short walk up the hill to go to a hole-in-the-wall venue known as the Bear Steps Cafe, where I noticed they had a lunch special on that day for a BBQ pulled pork panini served with fries that also came with a hot drink for an extremely reasonable price of £9.99.
So obviously I had to take that deal, the opportunity to get a hot sandwich with fries and imbibe a delicious mocha whilst not breaking my friend’s budget was too good to pass up. The fact it came out with a gorgeous crisp crust on top of the panini with parmesan and herbs sprinkled over top made it even more decadent than I could imagine.
The pulled pork was exactly how I like it: sweet, smoky, and tender all in one package. The cheese blend used to bind the panini together was perfect, in all likelihood it was some catering blend of cheeses rather than being a dedicated cheddar or mozzarella, but it had the perfect amount of stretch and flavour to it that made worrying about the details irrelevant.
The fries were about as standard as you can get, but there is never really a need to a cafe to go above and beyond on fries if you ask me, especially if they are included as part of a meal. I do not go to a cafe expecting the finest beef tallow triple-cooked chips, I am perfectly happy with the most basic fries to add a little bit of extra carbs to my meal.
Finally, my mocha was also pretty standard to the best of my memory. There is never really a way modern coffee machines can go wrong with making a mocha, and whatever balance is there for me is usually a pleasant experience of getting to savour the flavour of chocolate whilst getting one of my many needed caffeine hits throughout the day.
And again, this entire spread was the very reasonable price of £9.99. A sit down lunch in an independent cafe can very easily cost more than that in other locations, and getting a moment to sit down with a close friend to talk about a hobby we both share.
That covers everything for today. Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to enjoy the weekend. If you are one of the many who works on the weekend, I hope you are able to navigate the trials of everyone coming at you for the most minor of things. I see your hard work, and appreciate you persisting through it all the same.
Rosalia Rambles 